


Conversations in the Dark

by peppermiintsplease



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Dean Winchester Has Self-Esteem Issues, Dean Winchester Has Self-Worth Issues, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Panic Attacks, Self-Doubt, Self-Harm, Sentinel/Guide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 22:24:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17068283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermiintsplease/pseuds/peppermiintsplease
Summary: Dean is a Sentinel who doesn't feel like he deserves a Guide. Castiel disagrees.





	Conversations in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> It’s dumb. It’s trite. It’s tropey as fuck, but I wanted to write it, so I did. It hints at more of a backstory, but I’m not sure that I’ll get around to writing it. I also sort of made Sentinels and Guides my own thing, but whatever.

“I thought of the question I wanted to ask.”

It’s easier to tell secrets in the dark. To bare the most intimate parts of you (not that Dean’s ever been good at sharing parts of himself), and to ask the awkward questions. The dark lets you hide, and forgives you when you can’t keep the questions in any longer. Dean’s sharp Sentinel eyes see in the dark quite well, but the dark allows him to hide from Cas’s gaze.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I mean. It’s less of a question and more of a,” he pauses for a moment, trying to find the right words, “wondering comment?”

Dean’s pulse quickens slightly at Cas’ words. What kind of wondering comment could it be? Is he wondering why Dean never wanted a Guide? Wondering at his instinct to run away when they first met? Is he starting to wonder at how Dean of all people ended up with doctoral degree he doesn’t deserve?

“Sometimes you move away when I touch you,” he ventures, quite cautiously.

What? That’s what he was wondering about?

The pair of them lay on her large bed in the dark, curved toward each other like a closed parenthesis, their words filling the space between them. How could Cas wonder about something like that? Isn’t the answer obvious? Especially to Cas, Guide that he is.

“It’s not that I don’t want you to touch me,” Dean blurts out, unable to keep the words from escaping his mouth, “it’s more that you shouldn’t have to,”

“I shouldn’t have to?” Cas seems confused, furrowing his brow at his Sentinel. Not that Dean would ever get to be his Sentinel but, well. A man can dream.

A cold feeling of dread begins spreading through Dean’s chest, expanding slowly outward and causing him to take faster, shallower breaths while he considers Cas’ confusion. He doesn’t know? He doesn’t understand? How does Dean explain something that is so central to his understanding of the universe?

“Hey, _hey_ ,” Cas begins to sit up, feeling the echoes of Dean’s panic tingle through his fingers on the hand that had been laying on the bed between them. He hesitates to move his hand to Dean’s shoulder to soothe him, but decides to follow his instincts, “stop, please, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Dean follows him in sitting up, though he quickly hunches his shoulders, instinctively making himself smaller, less of a target. And he won’t look at Cas. “No. I mean, I’m fine. You really… Look, people don’t. They don’t. Stay. With me. After.”

“After what?”

“After they’ve—we’ve slept together,” people don’t _want_ Dean. At least not for long. They want him because he’s pretty, because his bow legs look like they should be wrapped around a waist, or because he’s got a nice mouth. They want the leather jacket and the band tees, and the cool car. They want him for the student-professor fantasy, but not after. They don’t want him after they spend time with him and realize he’s _wrong_. Everything attractive about him is on the surface, and you don’t need to dig deep to see that he doesn’t deserve their attention, though he tries. He knows he’s needy, desperate for approval. He knows that it turns people away when they find out how much work it is to be around him, “they leave.” Dean is fine for a fuck, but isn’t long-term material.

Cas’ face darkens somewhat in anger, as Dean tries to explain, “I wanted you to stay longer. I don’t want you to Bond yourself with me when you’ll regret it later, but I like having you around. It’s selfish, I’m sorry,” he looks over to the window, where he sees the rain that he had been listening to all evening splashing against the frame. It’s raining quite hard, the drizzle that had started in the afternoon having graduated to fat raindrops. Cas had walked to Dean’s house during the afternoon after work and had ruffled his usually messy hair to get the water out (“It’s going to start pouring out there soon enough” he had said with a smile. He had been right.). They had eaten dinner and gone to lay in Dean’s bed soon after the power had gone out, to share secrets in the dark. He hadn’t anticipated him asking this question, finding out quite so soon the reason he’d want to leave. He begins to move off the bed, away from Cas’ warmth, “I’ll go sleep on the sofa, you shouldn’t walk home tonight. Or—I’ll call you a car. I can call a car for you,” he’s definitely rambling, but as long as he talks and stays in action, he doesn’t need to feel the feelings or face his anger.

“You want me to go?”

“You’re angry with me! Don’t you want to go?” He shouldn’t have opened his mouth. Dean should’ve agreed with Cas and just said that he doesn’t want people to touch him. Dean would’ve gotten to keep him longer, even if his skin would hunger for his touch even more than it already did.

“I’m not angry with you!”

“Of course you are!” He’s beginning to be annoyed that Castiel pretends to be so blind. Aren’t Guides perceptive? Dean thought they were supposed to be able to _feel_ people. Guides are rare, but they were supposed to be able to tell the character of a person rather quickly. “And you should be! I lied to you. I let you think that there was a promise that we might be Bonded, even though I knew there was no way in hell you should be Bonded to me. I let you stick around, even though I should’ve told you do go and find a Sentinel that would be better suited. You need a better Sentinel. I’m not a good Sentinel, I’m not _good_ —“

“You’re beautiful.”

Dean’s cheeks turn pink and he snorts. “Sure. Whatever. But it’s not enough.” _I’m not enough_ , he says to himself.

“Dean, what are you saying, exactly? Because I don’t want to go. I will if that’s what you want. But I don’t want to go, do you understand? Given a choice between you and any other Sentinel—any other person—and I’m going to pick you every time,” Cas’ low voice has a pleading tone and Dean almost crumbles.

Castiel shouldn’t pick _Dean_. “Listen, I know you think that you want me, but I promise you that you don’t,” he casts around his mind, “I’m not a very good Sentinel. I Zone way too easily, my senses are too sharp sometimes, and too dull other times. I’m supposed to be able to take care of all this myself, but I can’t. So I should be alone.”

“You don’t think you deserve a Guide?” _Of course not._

“I don’t deserve a lot of things—,”

“You deserve to be taken care of!”

“I can take care of myself!” He can usually feel a Zone coming on, and a good shock of pain to his system nearly always got him out of it, “I need to be better at stopping my Zones, but that’s on me! I’m taking care of it!”

“Of course you can take care of yourself, but you don’t always have to. That’s literally what Guides are for. How are you supposed to stop a Zone from happening?” Cas looks like he’s getting angrier by the second.

“I’m supposed to be alone.”

“According to whom, exactly? And how do you stop a Zone by yourself?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dean looks away, remembering the harsh words thrown at him after a Zone when he was younger. _You’re not worth a Guide’s time if you can’t control yourself, you fucking moron. Now, get dressed, Dr. Alastair is going to hear about this._ Dr. Alastair taught him to control his Zones, but his dad taught him to be alone. “We’re getting off-topic.”

“No, I think we’re right where we need to be. You don’t think I want to touch you, even though I do, because someone taught you that you’d what? Ruin someone just by touching them—,”

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth!”

“Which part is the truth?”

“I ruin people! They see my scars and figure out that I’m no good, and so they leave. If I just could’ve controlled myself better, there would be no scars, and—,”

“What scars?”

Dean goes cold. He hadn’t meant to talk about his scars. There are two options now. Either Cas is going to see his marks and realize that he needs to keep Dean in line, or he’s going to leave. Neither option is good. Dean’s been rejected by a lot of people, but this is the first time it matters. This is the first time he’s tried to keep a Guide around, and to exactly no one’s surprise, he’s failing. He can feel the cold growing and growing, and it’s beginning to feel like the start of a Zone. Fuck, he’s overstimulating himself in the middle of an argument. His breaths start to come faster, and he starts to freeze. He needs to stop it. Jesus, could the timing be worse? He stumbles sideways half a step with the realization and then dives for his nightstand. Dean remembered to re-stock, he must have.

He hears Cas’s quick gasp and knows that he must feel his panic. He hears Cas’ rapid footsteps coming towards him and throws his arm out to stop him before he reaches Dean.

“Stop! I can do this! I can do this on my own I can do it, I can. I can. I—,” he fumbles for the little case, one-handed, and pulls out the small case of razors that he keeps nearby at all times.

“Holy shit, Dean, what are you doing?”

“I’m Zoning, I need to stop it—,” he’s already pulling out a blade to bring it to his hip to make small cuts, no time for sanitizing. If those aren’t enough, he hopefully has time to get out his lighter. It makes a more obvious mark, but it hurts more, so it’s more effective at stopping the Zones.

“You’re not Zoning, you’re panicking,” he reaches his hand out, but he’s already cut into her hip, bright red blooming along the cut, and the sound of a deep sigh permeates the room. “Dean, please stop, we need to clean that before it gets infected,”

Dean looks over at his wide blue eyes. The Zone seems to have stopped, but he can feel herself teetering on the edge of the drop that happens so often after these almost-Zones. “It’s fine, I promise. The blade is mostly clean, and I have alcohol wipes in here,” he gives Cas a shaky smile. How has tonight gotten so out of control? Dean sits down on the bed and waits for the inevitable sound of the door closing behind Cas. He knew that it was all going to end eventually, but he didn’t think it would be tonight. And he feels strangely calm about it. Like all of his emotions have been emptied out by one little cut. Cas must have seen the cigarette burns. They're faded, but they're still there. And he can't dredge up a whole lot of emotion about it.

Cas’s face is suddenly in Dean’s field of vision, and he’s holding a wipe and a bandage from his kit, “I’m just going to clean this, okay?” His voice sounds quiet, soothing as he gently wipes Dean’s blood away with the little square and places the bandage on. He gives a little kiss to the area over top of the bandage. “See? All better,” Cas looks up at him, kneeling between his legs, a look on his face that he doesn't dare to interpret.

“Why are you still here, Cas?”

“Because you’re in pain. And I told you, I don’t want to go.”

“It doesn’t count when I did it to myself.”

“It counts. I want to stay.”

“Cas—,”

He shushes Dean, “it’s my turn to talk now. First, what you just experienced wasn’t a Zone. That was a panic attack. You wouldn’t be able to tell if a true Zone was coming on, at least not according to the dozens of Sentinels that worked with us in my Guide training. Not a single one of them ever knew when a Zone was happening. Second,” here he pauses, “I don’t want to leave. You’re not going to ruin me. Those people who left you before are idiots and assholes. I don’t believe for a second you’re as rotten on the inside as you seem to think you are. Your brother and your friends wouldn’t be as devoted to you as they are if you were. They love you. Don’t you trust their judgment?”

Cas wouldn’t understand. Dean’s tricking them. “Not when it comes to me. They can’t see it.”

“I think they probably see you just fine. Will you come back to bed? Can we sleep, and talk about it in the morning?”

“Will you still be here in the morning?”

“I promise I will.”

“You don’t need to be if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,”

“I’m just saying. If we go to sleep, and you’re not here in the morning. No hard feelings, okay?”

“When you wake up in the morning and I’m still here, will you believe me that I don’t want to leave? I know you may not be ready to hear this, but I do want to Bond with you eventually. If that’s something that you want.”

Of course it’s something he wants. Dean just doesn’t understand why it’s something Cas wants. He looks at Cas suspiciously. Maybe it’s all a trick. People say things all the time. “I’ll try.”

“Okay. Then I’ll be here.”


End file.
